jjosephs

Really excited to get started with Arduino. I have a programming background and I have some great ideas to implement around my house. Doesn't make sense to get the Arduino hardware now. My laptop communication ports (USB, SD, Bluetooth) are busted and I need a entirely new laptop =( . The only thing that works is the wifi and DVD player. Is there something I can do to get started with Arduino now or am stuck until I get a new laptop?

Well sure. You could install the arduino IDE. Look at a lot of the example sketches. Start to learn to write sketches that verify (compile but no upload to a board) without errors. Read through the reference section of the arduino web page ( http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/HomePage ) and of course read the many postings made by the many arduino users here on this site.